Will Nawaz Sharif really book Pathankot attack masterminds?

New Delhi: It is fortunate that the government has reacted with caution and maturity to the terrorist strike at the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot, the first grave crisis faced Narendra Modi regime.

While guesswork and accusations are being bandied around about the involvement of the Pakistan Army and the ISI in the gruesome act, the incident has presented the Indian government with an occasion to probe further into the flux and churning inside the Pakistani civil and army administration.

At least outwardly, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has assured all cooperation in bringing the culprits to book and promised to take action in the leads provided by India. Sharif's posture and his promptness in speaking to the Indian Prime Minister clearly give out the tension between him and the the Pakistani Army establishment.

As the situation stands today, Nawaz Sharif is more of a titular ruler of Pakistan and the actual epicenter of the administration has passed on to the Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif, in the name of the National Action Plan, a government programme to root out terrorism.

But the Indian government should try to reach out to the Pakistani Army also, as in recent years, it has revised its military doctrine somewhat away from its Kashmir centric policy and incorporated into it a new chapter called sub-conventional warfare(SCW) - which is nothing but an admission of the internal fundamentalist threat.

The main thrust of SCW is, no doubt, against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan(TTP). However, there is information that the TTP is tying its knots with other terrorist outfits like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba et al.

In that case, the army might be in a predicament over re-orienting its relations with terrorist organizations. A more uncomfortable development for the army has been the news that the TTP and other fundamentalist terrorist organizations have penetrated deep inside southern Punjab - the most important recruitment ground of the army.

Although the army has achieved significant success in North Waziristan, there are reports that its Pashtun elements are still surrendering to the TTP while other non-state actors are receiving significant help as a result of the radicalization of the army and other security apparatus.